How the Dead Speak

by Val McDermid

Spoony turned, bending sideways from the waist so he could see past Tony and go eye to eye with Kieran. ‘You did right, bringing him along. We’re pitifully short on comedy.’

  The geek with the screwdriver looked up. ‘Wouldn’t hurt to give the man a chance.’ Judging by the looks of surprise on the others’ faces, he wasn’t given to expressing opinions.

  Spoony blew out a noisy breath. ‘Come on then.’ He nodded towards a chair with a foam-covered mic in front of it. ‘Sit your arse down and lay it on us.’

  Tony obeyed, squeezing past the Tweedle twins to get to the chair. He cleared his throat. ‘I am prisoner number BV8573. I’m also a clinical psychologist called Tony Hill. I’ve spent the last twenty-five years working with people like you and me, trying to figure out the reasons why things went wrong for us.’ He looked up from his notes. Spoony was leaning back in his chair, fingers locked behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘I don’t believe people are born evil. I think we end up on the wrong side of the law for a variety of reasons and most of them are not our fault. I’ve said it before and I will probably say it again: Societies get the crimes they deserve. Build a society based on greed, for example, and robbery will become your default crime. Turn sex into a commodity and bingo, sex crimes spawn like tadpoles. So if that’s the underlying cause of crime, logically the remedy must lie in our own hands. If we change the script people live by, then surely we should be able to alter our outcomes? I want to talk to you about ways we can change our scripts. And the first thing we have to talk about is fear. Because in here, we’re all afraid.’

  Abruptly, Spoony jumped up. ‘Right, that’ll do. You’ve got balls, I’ll say that for you, Doc. Coming in here and making out we’re all fucking bricking it.’

  Tony sighed and stood up. ‘OK. I get the message. I’ll just fuck off back to my cell and forget I ever wanted to be the Zoe Ball of HMP Doniston.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ Spoony demanded, head thrust forward, all brittle aggression. He snatched the clipboard from Tweedledum. He ran his finger down the page. ‘Yeah. Let’s cut the Catholics down to half an hour on Friday. You’ve got fifteen minutes a week for the next month, Doc. If you can cut it, the slot’s yours. Now fuck off, we’ve got programmes to make.’

  Tony was halfway out of the door when he heard Spoony’s valediction. ‘You don’t want to disappoint me, Doc. Druse don’t cut no ice with the people I know.’

  Just like that, the fear ratcheted up the dial again. No such thing as a place of safety here.

  5

  Every crime scene has its retinue of specialists. Police officers, medics, photographers, forensic specialists, profilers. Just as we all read the same book differently, taking different messages from it and finding different echoes in its pages, so it is with crime scenes. Every specialist reads the scene in their own way. When we put our heads together, it’s like a symposium on the dead person.

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  Paula took a cautious step forward. ‘Time to put the knife down,’ she said conversationally. ‘There’s better ways to sort this out.’

  The man started, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. But his grip on the woman didn’t slacken, nor did he move the knife.

  ‘Let her go. You can walk away from this.’ Paula kept her voice level and her body still. ‘It’s the only way out.’

  ‘Why don’t you fucking walk away? This is none of your business.’ His voice was less assured than his words. The woman squirmed, and he turned away from Paula to push harder against her.

  Paula dredged her experience for the right thing to say. ‘If you don’t stop now, it’s your life that ends here,’ she said gently. ‘There’s no going back from this. I don’t believe you want that. What’s your name? I’m Paula.’

  Now his head whipped back to face her. ‘What’s it to you? Who the fuck do you think you are?’

  ‘I’m just somebody that hates to see a man throwing away his life chances.’

  ‘You sound like a fucking cop,’ he exclaimed, outrage in his voice. ‘Only a fucking cop talks like that.’ And all at once he let the woman go and sprinted across the clearing towards Paula, the knife held out in front of him. The woman ran stumbling in the opposite direction.

  ‘Stacey, get her,’ Paula shouted, never taking her eyes off the man. He drew his knife hand back as he came near, preparing to strike. She waited till the last possible moment then stepped smartly to one side, lashing out sideways with her foot.

  She’d been hoping for his knee and the scream as he crashed to the ground told her she’d hit lucky. Paula pivoted on one foot, stamped on his knife hand then dropped like a stone on to his back. He was shouting incoherently in pain but she paid no attention. Paula grabbed his right arm and twisted it up his back, then dug with her free hand into her jacket pocket for the plastic cuffs she always carried. It took less than a minute to cuff the man and then to caution him. She pulled him up, using the cuffs for leverage, and he yelped as his knee took his weight. ‘Not your day, is it?’ she panted, only then searching the trees for any sign of Stacey and the woman.

  ‘You’re fucking mental,’ the man exploded. ‘I’m a bloody copper.’

  Paula laughed. ‘That’s the best one I’ve heard for a long time.’

  Then from behind, she heard a chuckle. ‘He’s not lying.’

  Paula had only been working for Detective Chief Inspector Ian Rutherford for three days. But already she recognised his soft Borders accent. Slowly she turned to face him. ‘Sir?’ It was a question whose answer she already knew.

  ‘Today isn’t just about team building, Inspector McIntyre. It’s also about me finding out how you operate under pressure.’

  ‘Is somebody going to get me out of these cuffs? She needs to learn about not making restraints too bloody tight. Not to mention my knee feels fucked.’ The man sounded as pissed off as he had every right to be, Paula thought. She didn’t imagine he’d expected to be done over by a woman at least ten years older than him.

  ‘Meet DC Thwaite from South Yorkshire. Drafted in for today’s little operation. You can release him now.’

  As he spoke, the ‘victim’ pushed her way through a thicket and back into the clearing, closely followed by Stacey, who had lost her hat and gathered a random crop of leaves and twigs in its place. One leg of her trousers was streaked with dark mud. She looked furious. ‘And this is DC Vaughn from Manchester,’ she said, her mouth tight, her voice clipped. ‘Who very kindly helped me out of a ditch.’

  ‘She’d already caught up with me by then, in fairness,’ DC Vaughn said with a grin.

  Releasing Thwaite, Paula could feel the adrenaline draining from her. DCI Rutherford looked very bloody pleased with himself. He was, she thought, a man who liked to feel pleased with himself. He clearly worked at keeping himself in shape and wore clothes that made sure nobody could miss that. His hair was always beautifully groomed – cut close at the sides to reveal the beginning of silvering, longer on top to prove he still had plenty of it. He could look stern or friendly; his jaw was as square as Clark Kent’s. He came with the reputation of doing things by the book, which was also, she thought, all about keeping up appearances. What this episode had shown her was that he was as capable of being devious as Carol Jordan.

  To hell with Rutherford and his games. Paula turned to face Stacey and made a point of consulting her watch. ‘We’ve got a rendezvous to make, DC Chen. We’ll need to get a move on.’ And she retraced her steps towards the track, not needing to check whether Stacey was at her back.

  Later, the real team-building exercise happened after they’d all shaken off Rutherford and gone to the pub. Paula and Stacey were joined by their long-standing colleague DS Alvin Ambrose and Steve Nisbet, a new recruit to their team. Nisbet was a recently promoted DS from West Yorkshire police. The grapevine said he was quick on the uptake and a good team player. That didn’t necessarily mean he’d be at home with this bunch of misfits, Paula thought.<
br />
  Alvin and Steve had faced a test too, within fifteen minutes of setting off on their orienteering assignment. They’d rounded a bend and stumbled on a man dragging a woman out of the woods towards a van parked on the track. She was wearing a low-cut short dress, her hands were tied behind her back and she was snarling and shouting in what sounded like Polish. She had one shoe on, its spike heel hanging loose. ‘This is the last time you’ll fucking run out on me, you fucking whore,’ the man yelled.

  They were a couple of hundred yards away. But they didn’t need to say a word. Whether it was people trafficking or a woman who’d failed to escape an abuser, the only thing that mattered was putting a stop to it. Both men took off at top speed. Steve Nisbet had the wiry build of a runner, but although Alvin was burly, he was fit too and kept pace as they raced down the track together.

  There was nothing subtle in their approach and before he could get the woman in the van, the man saw them coming. He moved faster, wrenching the door open and forcing her inside. He slammed the door and made for the driver’s side just as the two cops reached the van. ‘The girl,’ Alvin grunted, cutting to the side to go for the man, already half-inside. Steve opened the door but before he could grab the woman she’d kicked out at him with her bare foot, catching him a glancing blow on the jaw.

  ‘I’m a bloody cop,’ he yelled. She recoiled, scrabbling further into the cramped cubicle and screeching incomprehensibly. He tried to climb after her, but she was kicking out like a madwoman.

  Meanwhile, Alvin reached the man before he could shut the door. Alvin grabbed it and hauled it open as the driver jammed the key in the ignition and started the engine. Alvin didn’t pause for a moment. He leaned in and thrust his arm round the man’s neck in a headlock and unceremoniously hauled him out of the van. The man tried to fight free, but Alvin was far too strong.

  That was when Rutherford emerged from the trees behind them and called out, ‘Take it easy, everybody. We don’t want any injuries.’

  ‘He just stood there grinning like an idiot,’ Alvin said over his first pint, his voice thick with disgust. ‘Telling me what a good job I’d done except for being a bit heavy-handed getting the suspect out of the van.’

  ‘And apparently I was too bloody slow getting to the victim. I should have had her out of there by the time the engine started,’ Nisbet complained. ‘I’d like to see him do any better with a mad Polish traffic officer from Burnley trying to take his head off. I don’t think I’ve ever spent a more pointless bloody day in eight years on the job.’

  ‘Where’s the other two?’ Stacey asked. She pushed her chair back, preparing to get another round in, checking whether she should wait for the last two ReMIT members.

  ‘Getting debriefed,’ Alvin said. ‘Karim said their route took them across a car park and they spotted a lad trying to break into a car. Karim was all for getting stuck in but Sophie wanted to phone for backup. She got her phone out and told him to wait, but he ignored her and came up behind the lad. And just when he got there, a second lad jumped up from behind the car and the pair of them wrestled Karim to the ground. Sophie was still trying to give her location to the control room.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Looks were exchanged, the three who knew each other well reluctant to speak till they knew which way the wind was blowing with Steve. He shrugged. ‘I’m guessing eight years in retail management didn’t give Detective Inspector Valente much experience at the sharp end.’

  ‘You can’t beat working your way up from the street,’ Alvin said. ‘Even Stacey played a blinder today and she hardly ever gets out from behind a desk these days.’

  ‘Carol would never have brought someone in off the direct entry programme,’ Paula said. ‘We’re supposed to be an elite squad, not a babysitting service.’ Too late, she caught Alvin’s warning shake of the head.

  Sophie Valente rounded the wooden partition that had provided the ReMIT team with some privacy. She smiled sweetly at Paula. ‘Good to know who’s not going to have my back,’ she said. ‘Anybody ready for another drink?’

  6

  As the poet Philip Larkin famously said, ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’ Sometimes, it only takes one of them.

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  The years had been inexplicably kind to Vanessa, Tony thought as he was escorted across the visiting room to where she sat on the far side of a small table. He wondered whether she’d had work done to smooth some of the traces of time and malice from her face. Maybe a discreet lift behind the ears to get rid of any suggestion of a turkey neck? Her hair was the best a salon could provide, an ashy blonde with lowlights and highlights that looked as natural as a teenager’s. And as always, she was impeccably turned out. Linen jacket, silk scarf artfully draped. She was close to seventy, but she could have passed for early fifties. She looked like nobody else in the place, and he was aware of the frank curiosity of his fellow inmates and their visitors. He knew he’d be grilled relentlessly at that evening’s free association. There was always somebody looking for an angle and that was exactly what Vanessa was.

  Focusing on her appearance spared him having to consider what lay beneath. This was the woman whose narcissism and casual cruelty had made his early years a place of fear, insecurity and humiliation. A life deprived of love and respect could so easily have set him on the same road as the people he’d hunted and treated over the years. But he’d been lucky. One woman had spotted his pain and vulnerability and taken him under her wing just in time to show him a different possibility. But despite that, being raised by Vanessa had left him vulnerable to the cruelty of strangers. It was Vanessa, he believed, who lay at the root of the sexual and emotional impotence that had marked his adult life.

  And yet here he was, crossing the floor to face her again. He’d promised himself he was done with her. But deep down, he knew there would always be unfinished business between them till the day they put her in the ground. A ceremony he’d promised himself he would not attend. Once upon a time, he could have counted on Carol to hold him to that.

  Vanessa gave him a long cool stare as he sat down opposite her. Not a trace of a smile. ‘We are not the same,’ he said. ‘Not by any stretch of the imagination.’

  She seemed genuinely amused. ‘We both killed a man. We both used a knife. Up close and personal. And we were both set up. Most people would say, like mother, like son.’

  ‘What do you mean, “we were both set up”?’ He understood very well the equivalence she was claiming, but he wasn’t prepared to let it pass without challenge. She’d come out on top against a determined killer, but Tony knew that hadn’t been the first time she’d resorted to a sharp knife to resolve her difficulties. Another reason he hated their undeniable connection.

  ‘That night, you didn’t warn me there might be a homicidal maniac turning up on my doorstep. You set me up to be killed. But I outsmarted you, Tony. And you? You were set up by Carol Jordan.’ He tried to speak but she steamrollered straight over him and childhood habit made him give way. ‘I don’t suppose either of you would admit that. But I think she set out that day to commit murder in the sure and certain knowledge that you would do whatever it took to prevent that happening. And here you are: the living proof.’

  ‘You never did let the facts get in the way of a good story.’

  She smiled. ‘Self-defence, Tony. The way you set me up, you gave me that get-out. That’s why I’m on this side of the table and you’re on that one. Poor judgement. All those years and you hadn’t learned to cover your back.’

  Why had he agreed to this? She knew how to push his buttons. She didn’t excoriate him the way it had when he was a boy, but still she could sting. ‘Did you just come here to gloat? I was under the impression that you wanted something. You usually do.’

  Vanessa’s face had resumed its usual repose. ‘I’ve been robbed.’

  ‘And why has that got anything to do with me?’

  ‘Because I need Carol Jordan to deal wit
h it.’

  He couldn’t stop the bark of laughter that spilled from his mouth. ‘Are you suffering from dementia? For one thing, Carol isn’t a cop any more. And for another thing, she’d crawl across the Pennines on broken glass before she’d lift a finger for you.’

  ‘I know both of those details. For one thing,’ she echoed sarcastically. ‘I don’t want a cop. And for another thing, what she won’t do for me, she’ll do for you.’

  They glared at each other, neither bothering to disguise their feelings. ‘If you’ve been robbed, the police are the ones to help.’

  Vanessa shook her head impatiently. She leaned back and crossed her elegant legs. ‘The police are not going to get my money back. If they’re very lucky, they’ll arrest the bastard and stick him in here with you. But I’ll never see a penny of my money again. Carol, on the other hand . . . Well, from what I hear, she’s got her own way of doing things.’

  ‘You’re going to need to explain what has happened.’

  To his surprise, Vanessa looked away, focusing on the vending machine on the far side of the visiting room. ‘About three years ago, a colleague recommended a financial adviser to me. Harrison Gardner. He’d been producing consistently good results for her investments, she said. Not spectacular or sensational. Nothing suspicious. Just a point or two above the market, which isn’t so different from what some of the bespoke funds manage. She introduced us at a business conference and I thought he was impressive. He didn’t make ridiculous boasts or inflated promises. He said he’d worked for one of the big city firms and gave me the business card of someone I could check him out with.’

  ‘Which you duly did.’

  ‘Of course I did. I realise now it was part of the set-up, but it sounded kosher. The number took me to a woman who claimed to be the referee’s secretary and she put me through. I got a glowing recommendation. So I thought I’d give him a try. I put in twenty K to start with. Just a taster to see what he could do.’ Her mouth twisted in a bitter smile.